Race in the Comics Classroom

While it has become something of a cliché to assert that race poses a significant challenge in the classroom, I have long ceased to think of race and teaching in these terms. Indeed, as a professor of African American literature, I regularly deal with the difficult issue of race and have developed, and help my students develop, tools to grapple with American racial history and persistent racial tensions and conflicts. Which is why I was caught completely off guard in my comics course when I taught Aaron McGruder’s Boondocks and found myself attempting to discuss race with students completely unprepared to do so.

Students in my comics course are primarily white and male, though the ratio of men to women is significantly better than that of white to non-white students. The students are primarily not readers of comics. Out of 45 students, about half of them have read a comic strip or editorial cartoon, but not recently. 7 or 8 of them have read a comic book (usually Maus or Watchmen). Of that 7 or 8, 2 or 3 are currently regular readers of comics, typically superhero comics, or, on occasion, manga. My goal in the course is to introduce students to the many kinds of stories creators tell using this form.

I’ve taught Boondocks before, in Introduction to African American literature. I taught it alongside Toure’s collection of short stories Portable Promised Land. The two works come at the end of my class, and serve as examples of contemporary African American literature informed by (1) the prevalence of blackness in American popular discourse, (2) a long standing and well-established African American literary tradition, and (3) the shifting and competing definitions of blackness in post-Civil Rights America. In that course Boondocks works really well because, I realize now, students have been well prepared for a discussion of how McGruder plays with American racial discourse. Basically, race and blackness are not marginal to the conversation in this course. It’s the very air we breathe.

In my comics course, on the other hand, there is very little discussion of race. In fact, the only time race comes up is when we read books where the race of the characters is explicit (like Boondocks as opposed to something like Stitches or Spider-man) and, thus, unavoidable.

Here is what I want my students to get from The Boondocks: Aaron McGruder employs visual racial hyperbole as the foundation of his satire–we are confronted visually with racial stereotypes (the hood rat, the black militant, the Uncle Tom, the ditzy white girl, the confused biracial girl, etc.) that are then used to simultaneously deconstruct white supremacy and lampoon the absurdity of American racial thinking.

Take the above images, for instance. On the left is Riley Freeman, 8-year old gangsta wanna-be; on the right is rapper 50 Cent. Riley here isn’t simply recognizably black (which he needs to be for the entire premise of The Boondocks to work). He is stereotypically black–the cornrows, the baggy pants, the bling. We are meant to call to mind images from pop culture, like 50 Cent, that present very specific, very limited constructions of black masculinity. Riley is recognizable because we see him everyday. McGruder’s genius, though, is what he does with this stereotype. Riley is a child whose aspirations to thug glory are played for laughs. For instance, to express his outrage at being moved to the suburbs by his grandfather (you can’t have street cred if you come from the suburbs), Riley changes the street sign at the corner from Timid Deer Lane to Notorious B.I.G. Ave. In an early strip, he tried to get a refund on a toy lightsaber because it didn’t do any actual damage when he used to hit Cindy (the strip’s resident white girl) over the head.

The things Riley aspires to–fame as the result of violence, hot and cold running women, conspicuous wealth, swagger that other boys envy–are all things that 50 Cent (and countless other rappers and professional athletes) is famous for. Indeed, they are things that we reward rappers for. In the character of Riley, McGruder not only dismantles this particular stereotype of the black male by showing how much empty performance it is; he also implicates us–the larger culture–in this performance. 50 Cent needs an audience for his gangsta spectacle. And because we–including the students in the comics course–provide him an audience, McGruder’s satire seems to suggest, kids like Riley have every reason to believe the spectacle pays off.

In my African American literature class students, while missing the vocabulary of comics (encapsulation, gutter, panels, etc), are nonetheless able to talk, in basic ways, about the ways McGruder uses the visual language of race. But this is only true because the students and I spend 13 or 14 weeks talking about the various ways race is constructed and becoming comfortable having these conversations. We can have this conversation because it is no different, really, than any of the conversations we have all semester.

In the comics course, though, my students had no context, in general, for McGruder’s racial satire. My comics students don’t recognize the racial markers as markers, as constructions. Instead they read them as authentic: Black men really are that angry and paranoid. Biracial people really are that confused. Black kids really want to be gangsters. Again, it’s not that these kids are incapable of untangling and dismantling social constructions. They are perfectly capable of criticizing constructions of the masculine hero in a superhero comic or recognizing that the childhood represented in Calvin and Hobbes or Peanuts isn’t real, but rather a literary vehicle used to discuss “big ideas.” They had, of course, spent the semester successfully grappling with other kinds of cultural/literary constructions (the “I” in memoirs, journalistic objectivity), but race seemed to exist in a different category from these. It is highly charged, powerful, and invisible to people like my students who benefit from the stereotypes and privilege engendered by racial constructions.

The fact is, most of us are unprepared to talk about race. It is a failure of the culture we live in that the only time my students are having substantive conversations about race is in my 15 week literature class. Despite the fact that, as a society, we talk about race all the time [examples: the racial implications of Strauss-Kahn’s sexual assault of an African maid in his hotel room and Schwarzenegger’s years long affair with his Latina housekeeper; Cornel West’s assertion that the President is scared of free black men; the quickly-pulled Psychology Today article about black women being the least attractive of all human beings; the recent thread on the comics scholars list in which no one, seemingly, knew the definition of womanism], we do it very badly. We are often speaking ahistorically or speaking as if stereotypes are biological and cultural truths or as if color-blindness is the ultimate goal. When my students find themselves in a course where the discussion of race begins with the assertion that none of the above things are true (as my comics students do), but without the proper critical tools, it is not surprising that they fail to rise to the occasion. They are merely replicating failings of the culture they live in.
_________Conseula Francis is associate professor of English and director of African American studies at the College of Charleston.

34 Comments

Very interesting. I’ve found myself in similar or parallel situations in my own classes. If a course I teach is focused on gender, most students sign up with at least a rudimentary idea of what’s coming, and by the end of the course, most are pretty well equipped to hold their own in a discussion on gender. But when I start talking about gender or race in the middle of a course on comics/manga, I really have to gauge the reaction to make sure it’s not going over the students’ heads. And obviously, in discussing race, the reactions of my classes of Japanese students are completely differently from what you would find in a class of mostly white American students.

A particular delight of “The Boodocks” — at least in the timespan covered in the two collected volumes of the strip I have — was that McGruder didn’t just mock clueless/racist white society, but also ridiculed certain aspects of black culture: the dumbed-down approach of the Butts Every Time TV network, Riley’s idiotic fascination with bling, bad-assness (he was crushed when, after 9/11, terrorists were now considered scarier than blacks) and “rims”; the cultural chasm between their cranky grandpa and the two kids; Huey’s admirable if overblown aspirations to Smash The System.

Alas, (and no surprise) that mainstream media, even when it’s supposed to be flattering blacks, actually does its damnedest to reinforce stereotypes. We get black males in reality shows who are shiftless, lazy womanizers; athletes who are routinely depicted as menacing goons, even if they’re supposed to be “tame” ones…

Never saw the animated “Boondocks” TV series, but one print ad did not bode well: Huey — who in the strip would’ve never acted that way — was quoted as defending his use of “bitch” to refer to women.

It’s worth noting that the television show bears very little resemblance to strip, other than having some of the same characters. The wide-readching, astute satire of the strip was replaced by rampant homophobia and misogyny on the show. If you’ve only seen the show, you’re missing out. (It’s also worth noting that almost none of my students had read the strip, but almost all of them had seen a least an episode of the show.)

I saw Aaron McGruder speak I think shortly before the animated series came out. It was a really interesting talk in a lot of ways…but in retrospect it was kind of ominous. It seemed clear that he was more focused on the series than on the strip, and was hoping to really have it blow up and become a phenomena. Instead, of course, it went nowhere much (as far as I can tell) and it seems clear he ceded creative control in a kind of catastrophic way.

I’m interested to hear that gender seems easier to deal with than race. I’m trying to figure out if that’s congruent with my own experiences writing, and I’m just not sure. Of course, often when you write for an American comics audience, the balance of women reading is probably less than you’d have in a college course…

The only thing I remember about the one episode of the animation I saw was thinking how strange it was to be watching it on Japanese cable TV, where 90% of viewers would find it utterly incomprehensible.

Race is always harder to talk about than gender, I think. We all intimately know someone of the opposite gender, but not necessarily someone of another race or cultural background. That adds an element of tension and fear that you don’t really see in discussions about gender. Even some of the most intense arguments over gender are essentially extensions of a boy calling his sister “fat” and the sister calling him a “weirdo”; after the fur has flown, they sit down and eat dinner together. Maybe one reason the U.S. military is (by all accounts) one of the least racist institutions in the world is the fact that people of different races and cultural backgrounds eat dinner together, bunk together, work together, and even die together. That sort of mundane, visceral “family life” is probably far more potent than any polite, rational “conversation” ever could be.

I think, too, that conversations about gender, real ones, happen more readily and, often by accident. My students will often say blatantly sexist or wrongheaded things in class (women dress themselves specifically to catch a man, being a wife is like being a prostitute, something is wrong with women who don’t want babies, men who speak softly and wear clean clothes must be guy) that provokes a conversation about gender, if the class isn’t about gender. It’s difficult for me to imagine my students saying something similarly wrongheaded about race because they have been trained by our culture to talk so little about it. They might be thinking crazy things, but they are very good at holding it in, unless I pull it out of them.

I don’t know, Matt…slavery and Jim Crow flourished under conditions which often included close association. On the other hand, gender discrimination always occurs under conditions of intimacy — and some feminists argue the intimacy itself is the mechanism through which the oppression works….

Intense discussions of gender online can include or lead to “joking” threats of rape and actual cyberstalking. I just don’t think it’s true overall to say that conversations around race are necessarily more fraught than those around gender….

Noah, I wouldn’t call conditions under slavery and Jim Crow “intimacy.” “Proximity,” perhaps, but not genuine intimacy, as a rule.

The intimacy aspect certainly complicates issues of both gender and sexuality.

I don’t want to compare apples and oranges, which is what I think gender and race are, for the most part.

But I agree with Conseula that people are much more likely to clam up about race than they are about gender, particularly in the classroom, so plenty of wrongheaded notions, as Conseula put it, do not get aired and examined.

Black women often cared for white children; I think the association could be quite close.

Anyway…I can believe that racism is more buried than sexism. That does make sense. I’m not entirely sure that the result is always that racism is worse than sexism, I guess (not that you all are saying that it is). In the classroom, I can see where it would be useful to get opinions out in the open…but on the internets, for example, I think it may sometimes mean that sexist comments and attitudes are more acceptable to air…

Not to be too much of a reader who assumes that names tell us gender, but it does strike me that Conseula’s the only woman in this conversation (until now). Do women read this blog?

I want to affirm the wariness of comparing race and gender that I see emerging here. The “which is worse” conversation can quickly become reductive and not useful, not to mention that it often implies that gender and race are separate categories rather than intersecting (I do, in fact, experience gendered and raced experiences, often intersecting as does everybody I teach).

Noah: “Black women often cared for white children; I think the association could be quite close.”

Doh! That one completely slipped my mind. And it’s quite a doozy, too.

I’m definitely not saying racism is worse than sexism. (As I think you know, gender is my thing, so if you ever hear me say, “Sexism isn’t a problem,” you’ll know it’s time to have me put down.) But I do believe racism and sexism manifest themselves in very different ways. You don’t often see riots or lynchings triggered by issues of sexism. (The violence of sexism tends to be all too private.)

Yeah, anonymous Internet exchanges do not come close to working as a substitute for classrooms…or dinner tables, for that matter. It’s like graffiti on bathroom walls. There’s nothing to learn from “honestly expressing one’s opinion” if one does it in the manner of leaving a bag of burning manure on a doorstep and running away.

Hey Alison. Commenters on HU often skew male. However, we do have a number of women writers (half our columnists now are women, and one of our four regular bloggers, as well as many guest posters.) Our facebook followers seem to be about evenly split genderwise, as far as I can tell.

So…I would say that HU does seem to have a more-than-nominal female readership, though I’d guess overall it’s read by more men than women. I don’t have any way of knowing for sure though….

As far as your other point…it is dicey to compare racism and sexism. On the other hand, thinking about how race and gender work differently is I think valuable, if done respectfully….

@Mike Hunter-That was RILEY making the comments about “bitches” in the ads, not HUEY (who has an Afro); the characterizations on the show were quite consistent with their comic strip counterparts.

@Everyone else-The animated series wasn’t as topical as the daily strip for the simple fact that it takes longer to produce a half-hour animated series as opposed to a daily comic strip. Also, only watching one or two episodes of said animated series is *not* going to give you a clear picture of what the shoe is really like.

Yes, “The Boondocks” does indeed have an undercurrent of misogyny and homophobia, and MacGruder’s overuse of the “N” word (both “er” and “a”, as expoused bt the “Uncle Ruckus” character) got real old real quick, the show *did* have some profound comments on life for Black Americans in general, bringing up issues relatively few shows with a satirical bent would even dare to touch.

The issues of race and gender are treated as separate issues (when in fact they are hopelessly intertwined)by the mainstream for the simple fact that it’s easier to divide people by race, gender, ethnicity, etc., than to allow all these folks to realize they’re being duped by the powers that be, as it’s easier for the ones who would benefit from such deceptions to assert their influence when they fragment a huge mass of people into smaller groups of “us v. them”, deflecting the real problems from tighter scrutiny…

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William J. Griffin says:
@Mike Hunter-That was RILEY making the comments about “bitches” in the ads, not HUEY (who has an Afro); the characterizations on the show were quite consistent with their comic strip counterparts.
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Thanks! At least that part of the show was not as abominable as assumed, then…

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The issues of race and gender are treated as separate issues (when in fact they are hopelessly intertwined)by the mainstream for the simple fact that it’s easier to divide people by race, gender, ethnicity, etc., than to allow all these folks to realize they’re being duped by the powers that be…
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Indeed! And, gee, how unsurprising that “afraid to get either blacks or women mad at them by being insensitive to the utter UNIQUENESS of their ‘experience’ ” folks thus play along with that “divide and conquer” strategy.

Aren’t both racism and sexism basically means of justifying and maintaining oppression and exploitation of certain groups by “pushing” certain destructive images of the groups*, which are then absorbed by the masses, even — as they say in psychology — “introjected” by many members of the groups themselves?

So you end up with some blacks who mock studious members of their group by telling them they’re “acting white”; thus helping maintain the big pool of uneducated cheap labor they comprise, And women who’ve been told by more enlightened folks of the importance of getting an education, then (because it’s “not romantic” to use birth control; because womanhood=motherhood has been ingrained since childhood) end up “getting pregnant” and chucking those college dreams for changing diapers and whatever job will accommodate their unpaid child-tending duties.

* Basically, the unspoken cultural message is, “blacks and women are simple, unintellectual, childlike; they’re ruled by their emotions, and so it’s for their own good that they should be kept doing undemanding tasks, subservient to those who Know Better. To give them the idea they should have higher aspirations is just asking for trouble, and will make them unhappy in the long run, as their inherent limitations will lead to their failing.”

Based on years working in a corporate setting, I long ago began to define power as the privilege to not have to learn anything new. I’m now starting to see that privilege is, at least in part, the power to never have to consider another perspective.

I am immersed in the manga reading culture and I find that, overall, comics readers are actually bereft of imagination. In the sense that they take everything presented to them as literal and finites. What is on this page is what is – and only what is on this page is.

I wrote an article about this phenomenon some time ago on my own blog and it remains the most-read post I’ve ever written.

If imagination is the ability to comprehend what has not been experienced, then why do you think comics readers – who are constantly identifying with things that are not real, cannot do the same for things that *are* real? Or was it the parody element. I’ve known for many years that comics and manga readers can identify parody – often even after you point it out to them.

If ever we should meet Consuela – dinner’s on me so we can discuss this for hours, relatively uninterrupted. ^_^

“Aren’t both racism and sexism basically means of justifying and maintaining oppression and exploitation of certain groups by “pushing” certain destructive images of the groups*, which are then absorbed by the masses, even — as they say in psychology — “introjected” by many members of the groups themselves?”

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Sho’ nuff!!;-)

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“* Basically, the unspoken cultural message is, “blacks and women are simple, unintellectual, childlike; they’re ruled by their emotions, and so it’s for their own good that they should be kept doing undemanding tasks, subservient to those who Know Better. To give them the idea they should have higher aspirations is just asking for trouble, and will make them unhappy in the long run, as their inherent limitations will lead to their failing.”
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Well, here’s where it gets tricky…it’s not JUST the “Oppressed Classes” who are manipulated, but also those alleged “betters” who are also manipulated into doing the PTB’s dirty work for them. Some of these folks do benefit from the old “Divide and Conquer” jive, but ultimately at the expense of their own humanity.

Or, to put it in plain terms, “Hate hurts the hater as much as the hatee”.

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William J. Griffin says:
…here’s where it gets tricky…it’s not JUST the “Oppressed Classes” who are manipulated, but also those alleged “betters” who are also manipulated into doing the PTB’s dirty work for them. Some of these folks do benefit from the old “Divide and Conquer” jive, but ultimately at the expense of their own humanity.
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Yes. Where, for instance, many feminists with their “the Patriachy gives men the power to oppress women” argument miss out that (though overall better off than women) most men are victimized and manipulated too. Taught that they must not show any pain or sign of weakness; that they cannot deal with even their wives as equals (and so end up significantly alienated from the person who should be their strongest ally); that they must shoulder the lion’s share of the burden of being the breadwinner (and end up feeling worthless when they cannot do so); that women are emotionally frail (and so they feel they must protect them, by not sharing troubles they are having)…

Going back in time, look at Sparta! With a majority of the population being slaves, the ruling males had to devote virtually all their time to military training. There was no room for art, comfort, relaxation, true civilization. No room even for decent cooking! A visitor, having tasted their cuisine, said, “Now I know why the Spartans do not fear death.”

Back on subject: hooray, my “Boondocks” collections were actually accessible! Flipping through the first, “A Right to be Hostile,” here are a few gems that popped up…

Mike: “Where, for instance, many feminists with their “the Patriachy gives men the power to oppress women” argument miss out that (though overall better off than women) most men are victimized and manipulated too.”

Oh, puh-LEAZE.

Please tell me you intended that to be tongue-in-cheek.

Been reading too much “men’s rights” propaganda? Here’s one (male) feminist who will gladly repeat “their” argument (Cute how you both belittle and other-ize feminists with that use of the word “their”): Patriarchy–the same matrix of structural patterns that you guys have been calling “the Powers That Be”–does in fact give men the power to oppress women.

Period.

Quantitatively so.

If you don’t believe that, and believe that men suffer as much as women have under the system of gender roles still so prominent in our world today, then you really need to wake up and smell the coffee. Would men be better off in a society free of gender discrimination? I believe so, but that in no way means that my “suffering” as a (white) male comes close to what any American woman has to endure from cradle to grave.

Do you also believe that whites “suffer” from discrimination as much as blacks do? If so, congratulations on being in the majority! A recent study shows that (pinheaded) American whites, on average, actually believe that “reverse racism” is a *bigger* problem today than racism against blacks.

And what the *hell*…does Sparta (let alone Spartan cuisine) have to do with *any* of this? Are you trying to say that having so many slaves forced non-slaves to put all their energy (unwillingly) into military endeavors? Is this some meme you picked up on some website somewhere? Some obscure paper delivered at some conference? This may come as a shock to you, but slavery in ancient Greece had nothing to do with race.

I agree that patriarchy is bad for men too. Especially, I think, for minority men — the huge incarceration rates among young black men (as opposed to among young black women) certainly are connected to gender expectations under patriarchy — as well as to endemic racism, of course.

But, as Matt says, the reason racism and sexism are perpetuated is *not* actually because of false consciousness. It’s because whites and men benefit from them in various ways. The issue really isn’t that everybody is a dupe. The issue is that people buy in to the system because they get advantages from it — advantages that come at the expense of others.

That’s why (I’d argue) reason is not the solution to all problems. Enlightened self-interest can cause you to do some rotten things.

On another scale, foreigners are often amazed at how thoroughly American proles, no matter how oppressed and exploited, buy into the vicious American class system of confiscatory wealth and pauperisation of the worker.

It’s because the average American worker identifies with the rich shit who grinds him down, and considers his fellow proles to be losers.

Conseula, thanks for this post! I enjoyed reading it and hearing more about your experience. I have faced similar issues in my comics and African American literature courses as well.

I have also had some difficulty with Boondocks in particular, and I wonder: do you think that the form – or rather, the specific way McGruder works within the economy of the political comic strip – played a role in limiting the potential for more productive, critical inquiry in the classroom? I realize that weekly newspaper comic strips have to strike a fine balance between nuance and the broad strokes that make for a rewarding “punchline.” Boondocks didn’t always do this in a way that could connect with readers who were not already familiar with the topical allusions, political and pop culture references, and inside BET jokes. This doesn’t excuse students and scholars from doing the necessary work to interpret the material and its subtext (just as we might with a study of Doonesbury, for instance). I know, of course, that you are making a point that is larger than one comic. But I’m just curious about the extent to which the form of this particular strip really helped or hindered the discussion that you had hoped to have?

As an aside: I’m opting to use McGruder’s Birth of a Nation instead of Boondocks to talk about race and satire in my course this summer… we’ll see how it goes! Anyway, thanks again for your post.

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Matt Thorn says:
…Patriarchy–the same matrix of structural patterns that you guys have been calling “the Powers That Be”–does in fact give men the power to oppress women.

Period.

Quantitatively so.

If you don’t believe that…
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Look at what I wrote earlier:

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Aren’t both racism and sexism basically means of justifying and maintaining oppression and exploitation of certain groups…?

…Basically, the unspoken cultural message is, “blacks and women are simple, unintellectual, childlike; they’re ruled by their emotions, and so it’s for their own good that they should be kept doing undemanding tasks, subservient to those who Know Better….”
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Does that sound like I’m denying the existence of racism and sexism?

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Matt Thorn says:
…and [if you] believe that men suffer as much as women have under the system of gender roles still so prominent in our world today, then you really need to wake up and smell the coffee…
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No wonder I’m always griping about “comprehension-challenged” readers. Looks like in your effort to caricature me as a big, bad sexist you missed where I clearly wrote:

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…(though overall better off than women) most men are victimized and manipulated too.
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(Emphasis added)

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Matt Thorn says:
Would men be better off in a society free of gender discrimination? I believe so, but that in no way means that my “suffering” as a (white) male comes close to what any American woman has to endure from cradle to grave.
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Because, thanks to the all-reaching power of the Patriarchy, “ANY American woman,” even if she was born with a platinum spoon in her mouth to a millionaire family, and was cosseted, pampered, and treated like a little queen from infancy on, has suffered far more than every single solitary white American (coal miner, dishwasher, homeless man)…

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Noah Berlatsky says:
…as Matt says, the reason racism and sexism are perpetuated is *not* actually because of false consciousness. It’s because whites and men benefit from them in various ways.
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More “comprehension-challenged” reading; I didn’t say false consciousness was the underlying reason racism and sexism was perpetuated — that was “exploitation” — but the method for their perpetuation:

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Aren’t both racism and sexism basically means of justifying and maintaining oppression and exploitation of certain groups by “pushing” certain destructive images of the groups…?
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The goal: to exploit; get huge portions of the population to do work for lesser, or even no, compensation.

The method: using racism and sexism to shape overall attitudes and excuse/facilitate oppression and exploitation.

The higher echelons of the power structure don’t really care if there are right-wing/millionaire blacks or women among them. They see sexism and racism (and even religion, patriotism) as tools to manipulate the masses, in order to achieve their desired goals.

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norb says:
…foreigners are often amazed at how thoroughly American proles, no matter how oppressed and exploited, buy into the vicious American class system of confiscatory wealth and pauperisation of the worker.

It’s because the average American worker identifies with the rich shit who grinds him down, and considers his fellow proles to be losers…
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Absolutely!

I read once how America was the only major industrialized country without a major “worker’s party.” As Noam Chomsky wrote, the U.S. has only one party, the business party, with conservative and liberal branches…

Nobody said that. It’s not about who’s suffered more. But sexism affects women of all classes, just as racism affects African-Americans of all classes — and just as class dynamics hurt even white men who are lower class. It can certainly affect them differently (in Victorian times upper-class women were prevented from doing much of anything, which was oppressive, while lower-class women were faced with a limited choice of degrading and dangerous professions — which was also oppressive.)

Pitting one group against the other, which certainly seems to be what you’re doing, does not generally help anyone. In fact, it’s one of the main reasons that class in the U.S. is less acknowledged as a problem than it is in Europe.